When looking for new ideas for your company whether it’s the latest marketing or design ideas. You could lock everyone in your company in a room with no food until you either starve coming up with the best ideas or start working out who to eat first. Your internet audience grows everyday but mind reading isn’t easy so how do you find out what they want?…
What do the public want?
When looking for new ideas for your company whether it’s the latest marketing or design ideas. You could lock everyone in your company in a room with no food until you either starve coming up with the best ideas or start working out who to eat first. Your internet audience grows everyday but mind reading isn’t easy so how do you find out what they want?
Some people like Rhino’s some like Sheep?
You could send your interns dressed as different animals to stand in traffic and see what animal attracts least amount of angry drivers or see which animals people aim for first. Thankfully for myself and the other interns here we suggest a much simpler, more direct and safer approach. JUST ASK!!!!! Social marketing isn’t just a tool for you to show people what your business is doing it also works for them telling you what they think and want. If your the type of person that looks at multiple hotel reviews until you find the bad one you’ll know people are generally pretty forthcoming to say what they like and what they don’t.
Show the love
If you show your customers or followers you appreciate their feedback it makes them feel loved. Well maybe not loved but certainly more valued than if you change your site every few months cause you don’t like it even though your online sales constantly grow until you redesign yet again creating an unfamiliar user experience and unfamiliar appearance . Like when you go to the supermarket and they have moved everything round the shop again, it’s annoying. For some they will ask for help to find it or wander quizzically round only wanting to know where their favourite biscuits are? Most likely they will go somewhere else. Potentially you loose a sale and maybe they prefer the new store so they don’t come back to yours.
Recommendations…
On our Social Media Marketing course one thing that is taught with real importance is to think of your Facebook as 90% branding and 10% business. Nobody is delighted when they here a knock on the door and a friendly looking face instantly gives you a hard sale for their product. Like when conversation to make it work you need people to engage with you. It will lead to you having more idea what the customer wants, likes and doesn’t like. I cannot stress the importance of recommendations enough. Word of mouth has influenced the simplest things from what restaurants to avoid to what the new iphone5s new or perhaps lack of features will add to your tech loving life. If your friends are telling you somewhere is terrible chances are you won’t go there.
Read my mind………
Here are my three favourite tools for gaining an insight into your subscribers without stalking and phone tapping. Warning it might not be what you want to hear but it might just save your site from the internet graveyard. I don’t expect a company to know entirely what I want but I am looking for them to take customers request under consideration to make the whole experience better.
I only started using this a few weeks ago but it’s so simple its available online or as an app. You setup an account. Post a pic or pictures and anyone who’s also signed up to PolarB can vote on which Yes or No, A or B option they like the best. No thumbs up or thumbs down here. You should be thinking like a marketing demon and saying but thats a very limited audience my thousand of Facebook and Twitter followers won’t see this so I won’t get their opinion and they are really who I want to hear from. You can link your Polarb account to all the usual social sites and copy the link to even send it out in your newsletter. Say you want to launch a new t-shirt design and before you spend a fortune on printing them. You now have a way to see how popular they are or if your going to end up giving them away in your newsletter for free the next month.
I voted for the blue T-shirt.
Some people make the mistake of thinking that likes on Facebook for example translate into sales. It’s actually very hard to actually make sales through Facebook. It takes me a second to click like with little effort. For me to recommend something or somewhere I and most people wouldn’t buy or recommend based on that alone. DON’T bombard your followers with posts every twenty minutes. You become like an overly pushy car sales person that ends up causing the person to feel pestered, walk out the showroom or in Facebook terms unlike or unfriend you. For a good idea of controlled Facebooking it’s worth taking a second to like Web Courses Bangkok Facebook page. We update frequently and often ask for people’s opinions on things from what courses you would like to see us teach to what our uniforms should look like.
TripAdvisor
I don’t book a hotel without checking out the hotel review on here first. Every hotel will have a bad review if you look long enough but for me personally it’s the candid photos that really give the game away if I’m going to like things when I open the room door or catch some disease from the stained bed sheets. As a hotel manager you could be mortified at all your little unfortunate cleaning mishaps being exposed or you can see it as a chance to shine in the eyes of the massive internet audience. If you get a bad review respond to it. Perhaps you can invite that guest back again with a special discount and then some other people read your the kind of manager that deals with complaints so they think I want to stay somewhere with a manager like that? Even better if you show the negative reviewer a better experience, they write a better review and hopefully remove the negative one.
Want to know more about online marketing?
Learn more about newsletters and other areas of online marketing come and take a look at our Online Marketing short course here at Web Courses Bangkok. Also, take a look at this article on good seo and online marketing advice.
